Good Old Summertime

 When I woke up this morning, I thought, Its wonderful Wednesday! I kept thinking of all of the good things I wanted to do today. First, get up and go outside and drink coffee. I wanted to watch the moon before the sun came up. (its a brand new moon.) Then watch the sun come up. (Its over Greenhorn now.) 

I sat and breathed in the summer air. Warm and toasty. No air conditioners were running. So it was very quiet and there was still crickets chirping. I said to myself, you better hurry, Mr. Cricket, better get that wife pretty soon. 

I watered my pots of Chrysanthemum that really should be pulled out but in my mind, I still have that secret desire to make Chrysanthemum tea. Here is what I found about it.

 "Chrysanthemum tea is said to have a host of health benefits, and it has definitely become my go-to when I’m feeling under the weather. It may help you reduce inflammation, serve as a good source of vitamins A and C, and lower blood pressure and cholesterol". 

My tiny herb garden still needs plants. I have been so picky about plants since I moved here. Having a smaller place, I have to really think about what I want things to look like. I can't go all willy-nilly like at my other house. There are things I still miss like my pots of mints. I need to plant things in the fall when it gets cooler. They say we could have temps 113-115 by the weekend. Last time they said that we got monsoon clouds and it never got that hot here. It that hot in the desert. Where you expect it to be hot. 

I got out my camera this week. I had got lazy just using my phone. I think I have the brain power to take pictures again. Wow!! What a learning curve. I forgot everything, even how to plug in the memory card to my computer. I had to fool and fool with it and finally I was able to get pictures I liked. Its going to take a lot of refresher courses on my part to remember how to use my camera. When life is in upheaval I loose my creativity. My life has been pretty crazy the last few years. I keep telling myself, life is never going to be perfect, so you have to be creative in spite what is going on inside of me. Creativity is where my soul settles down and peace happens and I forget what is going on in the world. I keep telling myself, I can't change it so why do I give myself airs thinking by worrying about it, it will help. To live life in spite of the storms that sometimes come from unexpected places. At the first of the year, my words were Enchanted by the Unexpected. Now in July, I hope I can continue to do that. 

I am going to hook today, and listen to "The Unexpected Mrs. Polifax. The books were written by a lady name Dorthy Gilman. That is the first one. I got my books from Audible read by Barbara Rosenblatt. I love when its hot outside to listen to the antics of Mrs. Polifax. What could be any nicer than that? 

I hope you have a wonderful day,

Kim

"In the morning when Mrs. Pollifax awoke she realized at once that a fateful day was beginning. She lay and thought about this dispassionately, almost wonderingly, because to every life there eventually came a moment when one had to accept the fact that the shape, the pattern, the direction of the future was entirely out of one's hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. There was nothing to do but accept, and from this to proceed, doing the very best that could be done.”
― Dorothy Gilman, (The Unexpected, Mrs. Polifax.)

Happy July

 Happy July! Summer is here! I wanted to show you this picture. A few years ago we brought this cactus back from one of our trips to Tucson. It blooms in June for one day. Then the blooms fall off and it waits for another year to bloom. Some years I feel just like that. I hope this year, I can bloom a bit longer. 

This is going to be a brag post of sorts. I took pictures of my projects. I was surprised how many I have accomplished as I went around taking pictures. First though, last night my daughter in Tucson had her first monsoon in her new house. So much water and the seasonal creek next door to her house turned into a lake and a raging river. But after the storm came the frogs. Where did they come from I keep wondering. 

Her children were catching them of course. One of my grand daughters said to her Mom. " I love frogs more than you, Mom!" I woke up laughing about that still. 

Then Ron brought in a baby toad he found in the flowerbed this morning. I understand completely, baby frogs are just so cute. 

Okay, here is my Maggie Bonomini patterns I bought from Blackberry Primitives:

Of course you can see why I did that top picture. It was all for the chicken. I have had such fun working with wool. I have used my pieces of my wool that are too small to cut into strips so it has been a great way to use those up. 

My current rug. Its from Old Tattered Flag. I am having issues, because of the colors I have chosen. I find its so hard to hook when I don't like the colors. I am going to keep plugging along. Have you rug hookers ever found, once you start reverse hooking a pattern, then like me I  seem to keep doing it over and over. I have made a rule to myself to really watch how much I reverse hook. I  just put the rug away I can go on after a little while without it driving me crazy. I need to get it finished as I have two lovely patterns coming from Saundra.

I made the little flags this week. Such a fun little project. You know how I just have to play with that mantel that I have now. That top board was out in our wood pile and the square smaller boards for the fireworks. I just painted, and glues and I thought it turned out pretty good for just an idea I had. 

See my tiny squash? I was so excited when I found this the other day, I am sure its bigger now. A couple flowers in my garden area. From where it was last year to this year, I really like how its turned out now. 

I always love before and after pictures. We spend so much time outside now. I think a year ago when we moved in I just kept the blinds closed. Its just right I think. 

I finished and made a pincushion out of the pattern by Brenda Gervais, Collector. 

 

Its from Stacy Nash, The Rose Cottage, Sampler Pinkeep. I have been working on it a long time. I think I got it in May. 

When we were in Tucson, we like to visit garden shops, just to see the different kinds of plants they have. While we were there we saw a Madagascar Palm. Because this time we took a plane, we of course couldn't buy one and bring it back. The other day when I went to Home Depot to get sticks for my flags, I went through the garden shop, slowly. I looked in every crook and cranny. I was looking for a Pony Tail Palm for Ron's Bonsai collection and what did my little eyes spy? This, I was so excited. See those tiny thorns coming from the trunk? That is what the tribesmen use in the Amazon and Peru to make blow darts. Isn't that cool? Well we thought it was. So I brought him home. This time of year, the garden shops get such weird stuff. It isn't our zone so they have to spend the winter inside. This is when we always find Desert Rose too. 

I am kind of all over the place today. I was surprised when I decided to take pictures how much stuff I had made. I have really felt like a lazy slacker so I was glad to find that I had been doing something. I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July. Thank you so much for stopping by today,

~Kim~

“Like ghosts the children walked across the lawn on their bare feet. The moon was full. Above the damp grass hung a veil of mist, luminous with moonlight and spangled with fireflies. There was no wind, and the sound of the brook was very distinct, tinkling, splashing, running softly. 

---Elisabeth Enright, The Four Story Mistake.

Almost July

 How can it be the last time I wrote a blog it was April??? Where have I been? What have I been doing? I think even moving and all of that jazz last year, I still wrote more than I have this year. 

We got back from Tucson and watching the kids while, Kessie and her family moved to a new house. That was the mountain we saw when we looked out the back of the house we rented. Tucson is nice, but really hot. This was the first time we flew. I like driving better I think, but it was nice to get home after an hour and half flight. 

That was the other mountain we could see. How I would love to get closer to it. I have been sewing a little since I got back and hooking a little. But mostly I have been reading. In 2020 I stopped going to the library. Mainly because my branch was closed for remodeling. I could go to a different branch, but for awhile it wasn't opened and then it was for pickup only. I just didn't want to do that so I got a Kindle. 

I went back to the library to my newly remodeled branch the beginning of June. When I walked in I was greeted like a old friend, by the building as well as the wonderful staff. It was like finally I got to come home. I do love the touch and feel of books. With my Kindle I was introduced to new authors and new genres that  I have never read before. I also read more books on the Kindle but never the same type of enjoyment reading from a real book.  

I picked up books, by Elisabeth Goudge, Rumor Godden, M.M. Kaye and Dick Francis. Books that I haven't read in awhile. When  I woke up this morning, my first thought was, I have an empty calendar. I don't have a single thing on it. It is like finding a whole box of the yummiest box of chocolates and having the job of choosing which one I want. That is how it feels today. After a very, very busy spring and now summer. I have an empty calendar. 

  My grandson texted me this morning, and said, " We are sending pictures for rugs for our new house." 

I will enjoy making rugs for them in their new house. Soon. Because I do love everything about rug hooking too. 

Now though, I am enjoying reading and going to the library. When I think of summer, it reminds me of the smell of the chlorine in the  swimming pool, the hot toasty smell of the flowers and the grass in the yard. The sound of the trees in the summer breeze and the idea of sitting in a tree with a book and living in different worlds. When I read books I am reminded how you are sharing a brain with someone. You are reading their thoughts and incorporating their world view in to your own. I still believe that reading is one of the powerful things a person can do. As I am older now, I am much more careful of what I read. I can go back to books I read as a child or young woman and I am so surprised that thoughts I have claimed as my own are really not but another persons thoughts. So I realize that I am not really me, but lots of people who have influenced me and have been my role model. All because of having a library to spend time in during the summer.

I always had our children in summer reading programs. I don't know if they loved it as much as I did, but what I loved on hot summer afternoons when we would all be in the living room sitting quietly reading our books from the library. My library here is much smaller now. I really need to go through it again and clean out the weeds that seem to crop up here from time to time. While in Tucson, helping to pack up books, I ran across the books that had come from our house and now live in the library of our grandchildren. How happy it makes me to know that the books our children read are now being read again. Every book I picked up and asked the kids, " Have you read this? Did you like it? Tell me what you thought?" They had read them all and they had a opinion of that book and they could quote a line from it that they liked. I was quite astounded and very blessed. Knowing that this is the third generation to meet the friends and acquaintances that I met so long ago. I loved that one of my grand daughters loved Ramona Quimbly. She said she has read all of those books over and over. I loved that they don't realize that already they just love books and there is no reading level they just read because they like it. 

I have just written this post, only about books and my love for them. Not really much else. I am glad that on the first day of my summer vacation, I could write a blog. 

I hope you are all enjoying your summer too. Its nice to be back.

~Kim~

"Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always."

Elisabeth Enright.

Now Sweet April

 Happy April!

We planted Lilacs after we took out a do nothing hedge. If I can keep them alive, I will have a very nice group of flowers. These are Persian Lilacs, so hopefully they will like the weather better than the Eastern kind. They smell wonderful. Isn't spring lovely? I have loved watching this new neighborhood wake up this year. I admit to thinking about things I looked forward to each year at the old house, but I grab myself by the scruff of the neck and don't let me go there. Look forward, never back. How on earth would I get so many projects finished if I was Kim Hula-hoe hand I ask you? 

I have one side to finish binding to finish Mr. Whiskers from Star Rug Company. 

 This is such a fun little pattern. I just enjoyed it so much. I love whimsical rugs. I hope to finish his binding today. Binding is so hard on my hands, I don't know why, but they just get so sore, I can't even open a door. I guess I should stick to the hula hoe... Not!

I got that cute little book from With Thy Needle and Thread, Jelly Bean Jubilee. So many cute patterns. 

The hardest thing was picking which ones to do first. Such fun colors too. 

The big rabbit pinkeep is from Scattered Seed Samplers. The chick is from the Jelly Bean book. 

It was so much fun to do these spring things. I had made a goal for myself from January to March. I have accomplished them. Now I have to plan some goals for April-June. I know planting my teeny-tiny garden is in the works so I might slow down on the sewing and hooking front. Its such a different year from last year. We put the house on the market a year ago today. So glad to be here this year. 

So its all good. All of the babies born in 2020 are growing and are perfect. Crawling, trying to walk and rolling over. Sweet, sweet things to think about. I feel very, very blessed and happy. 

I wish you a wonderful Easter, full of blessings,

Kim

… the two men asked them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ ”…